Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Case Solved: Veeam Reports Not Functioning Properly

Issue
Bumped into this strange issue. The latest version of the Veeam MP was imported and configured properly. Everything worked just fine. But when trying to run some of the Veeam VMware Capacity Planning Reports, I got this error A valid value for parameter ‘Aspects to be Analyzed’ must be specified:
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But that field in the Report parameter area is greyed out so I couldn’t do anything with this message:
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Another thing I noticed was that even though the Report Details stated the Scope field to be populated by default:
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And:
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However, in my demo environment everything worked as intended:
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So I found myself in a situation where I have confirmation the Reports are working as described by Veeam (demo environment) and a production environment where an issue was at play. Time for some investigation.

Cause
After some experiments with other Reports I noticed everything to be just fine. The issues was limited to the Veeam Reports only. Time to take a look under water, at the SSRS side of things.

When I ran IE and opened the web based SSRS instance on the related SQL Server, and compared both environments (my demo environment and the customers production environment) I noticed these differences:
Production Environment
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Demo Environment
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As you can see, the Objects field for the Report in the production environment has only a close statement <Data />, so not a single Object is selected, whereas the demo environment has a whole string, resulting in a selection of Objects.

As a result the SelectedAspects field for production is empty and for the demo environment properly filled.

But no matter what I tried, the issue remained the same.

Issue solved
Time to contact Veeam support. Within a day the issue was solved. One of their employers contacted me and I demonstrated the issue. Told what my findings were, how I tried to solve it myself but didn’t succeed in it. Also told him my conclusion, the issue was limited to the Veeam Reports only and that in some conditions this situation occurred. Still had the demo environment running like clock work.

Within an hour Veeam contacted me and gave me an updated version of the Reports. And the problem was solved!

So whenever you find yourself in this situation, contact Veeam support and ask them for the updated versions of the three Veeam MP Reports, version 6.0.0.1423 and you’ll be just fine.
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Recap
This is the main reason why I prefer Veeam. Of course, with so much coding and supporting many different SQL versions, changes are there might be some minor issues. No problem.

However, the way these minor issues are addressed is what differentiates a good vendor of software from a bad vendor. And until now Veeam has shown clearly not only to deliver good software but also to have a highly qualified support group in place which addresses reported issues quickly and professionally.

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